Lots o' Monday Music

Man, am I gonna miss New York. Where else can you jump on the subway, 7 minutes later be at the Mercury Lounge, then proceed to see three really good bands in the space of 2 hours, grab a great late evening Turkish dinner and then be home about 7 minutes later?

D.C.'s one saving grace? It's less than a 1/2 hour drive to Waffle House. Eat that, New York.

First up tonight was Takka Takka. I think I saw these guys open for that awful Clap Your Hands Say Yeah show in Central Park last summer. They didn't leave much of an impression, and despite the short-lived buzz around the band, I forgot about them. Then, about a month ago, I found out that LeFirm's guitarist, Rene, had joined Takka Takka as a permanent member. (He's splitting time between the two bands.) So I decided to give TT another shot. Gotta say - they put on a pretty damn good show tonight, especially their last two songs of the night, which were downright stunning. It definitely helped that Bryan Devendorf of The National sat in on percussion, though I'm pretty sure they would have sounded great even without him.

The band has a few shows coming up, including opening for The National at South Street Seaport next month. That'll be my last Seaport show for a while (if not forever)... sniff sniff...





I stuck around after TT to check out a bit of Die Romantik's set. I'd heard of them before, but had no idea what they sounded like. I only saw about 1/2 their set, but from what I saw, I'd call them "gothic prog". It's much better than it sounds. And the drummer looked like Luke Wilson's character from The Royal Tenenbaums, so they have that going for them. I'll definitely need to hear more from these guys.



Finally, I ran around the corner to Pianos to catch Eastern Conference Champions' CD release party. I'd only heard one song from the band before, but liked it enough to check them out. Glad I did. To be honest, from what I heard, the band doesn't have a lot of great songs, but they play them with such energy that it's impossible not to like them. Songs aside, I kept comparing them in my head to The Whigs. If you've read this blog before, you'll know that's a damn fine comparison. The band was tight, loud and a lot of fun. They're also from Philly, so I'm hoping to catch them down in D.C. before too long.

Check out their song "To The Wind" over at Rock Insider.